Clojure Web and Mobile App Development for Telemedicine

In the current environment of coronavirus crisis, remote working model and quarantine, the importance and practical value of telemedicine have experienced rapid popularity growth. Consequently, humanity is in a bad need for effective and reliable tools, which would allow people to get high-quality medical services distantly. 

Agiliway has started to work on a project concerning telemedicine with our US client. The platform, the Agiliway engineering team is constantly working out, is focused on the definition of health deviations through video sessions. In order to grant the theory a practical implementation and to make it of high value in medicine, the very project was initiated. Due to the project’s nature and primary focus, there has been a wide array of challenges and ever-changing additional requirements to meet and stick to.   

Web application along with a mobile one for iOS and Android are developed with all the features added being tested through manual and machine models based on certain sets of markers.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS AND CHALLENGES

The requirements have the status of “ongoing” and are constantly experiencing a good deal of modifications and enhancements. However, there were a few initial requirements the client had in mind while deciding to turn to Agiliway for some development part. The platform was aimed at the patients’ video sessions estimating as well as handling the payments for the service provided. The initial goal was to test health states with the help of the product. However, nowadays, there arises a necessity to expand the project’s coverage regarding the adjacent healthcare spheres.  What is more, in the long run, the project is seen as a wide-scale product able to serve the healthcare-related spheres.   

Challenges have been an integral part of the project’s development and implementation process. Much depends on the needs of the end client, though; with each new medical case/s targeting, we need to keep our focus on quality which each team-member made an input for.  

The recent addition of a QA engineer is a valuable input to QA monitoring and enhancement. Besides, due to the specifics of the team structure, the client often communicates directly with the members, so approaches or specifics should be systematized via many channels.     

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PROJECT SOLUTIONS

The application consists of the mobile (iOS and Android) and web platform built with ClojureScript. Agiliway software development team is doing the development of all major components of the system including AI/ML model, which is now on the US part of the team, from the initial stages of the application. 

The text is processed with Python’s NLTK library to get an emotional coloring of the text and to build emotional estimations. The web application estimates the absolutist language score of the text for predicting health deviations in different parts. The videos, texts, automatic scores, and estimations are available to the patient’s doctor helping him to get a better understanding of his patient’s health condition. The video and audio real-time analysis is an essential part of the system. In addition, doctor gets quick access to patient’s health history and can make any needed changes fast and without wasting time on unnecessary paperwork. 

We use AWS Terraform for hosting and infrastructure manipulations to manage and deliver the application while changing and creating the infrastructure safely and predictably. A web application is a kind of administrative panel including session analytics and is mainly used by the clinics and administrative organizations.  

Web Frontend is built with Reagent together with Re-frame, etc. to: 

– create UI components, while being a fast-enough interface due to plain functions and basic data operated on;  

–  manage the application state as a front-end framework that adds greatly to structure the application’s working out and maintaining processes;  

– choose the app testing option that could be able to work with a wide range of JavaScript frameworks and would be of considerable simplicity; etc. 

In its turn, a mobile application for iOS and Android is oriented at the patients and comprises text information along with video presentations and possible disease development scenarios based on a range of factors, commands, or a certain combination of actions. In the course of the app development, Reagent was used together Re-frame to manage the state of the application.

The Backend technologies are based on the Clojure server used for creating a robust, scalable, and easy configuration developing platform; together with a Datomic Cloud: quite specific, relatively new yet highly flexible, Database with an elastic scale option.

VALUE DELIVERED

Under the current conditions in the world, the issue of telemedicine, as well as its most efficient practical applications, has gained great popularity presently. The given project on telemedicine, although still being under development, has already started to demonstrate its short- and long-term value. We are currently having several clients ready to work with us on the issue. They are clinics, which would like to use the application in a number of various types of applications. On working out special testing models, those in need would be able to get professional assistance.  

The application developed is constantly accumulating more and more features and symptoms for better analytics. To make the results even more accurate and to add more practical value, the machine learning model is always double-checked by a ‘live’ doctor as well. We practice the format of requirements and testing formulas flexibility along with the doctors’ feedbacks gathering while being aimed at smooth and quick application orientation shifts. 

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